Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges

Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges

Governments all over the world are manipulating social media for their own ends. That’s where the digital footsoldiers come in – smearing opponents, spreading disinformation and posting fake texts for ‘pocket money’

You can hire your own troll army if you have the cash. In 2011 the PR firm Bell Pottinger told undercover journalists that they could “create and maintain third-party blogs”, and spruce up Wikipedia profiles and Google search rankings. Indeed marketing has a rich history of so-called “astroturfing”, which is laying down fake grassroots. Take Forest, “the voice and friend of the smoker”, which at least admits in nearly invisible small print that it is paid for by the tobacco industry.

Now, however, manipulating social media has become part of the business of government. It may yet influence how governments are formed. Recent reports suggest that many of Donald Trump’s most fervent online supporters are not themselves Americans, but Russians being paid by their government to help him win. One told Samantha Bee that she pretends to be a housewife from Nebraska. Why she would confess it now is unexplained, but when you look around it begins to feel like everybody does it. It’s just that no two countries’ methods are the same.

China

The existence of the wumao dang or “50 Cent Party” is not a secret in China, but then it is hard to employ up to two million people secretly. Even the state-owned Global Times reported with approval on the practice in 2010, citing Changsha’s party office as the source of the name after it paid a team of commenters 600 yuan a month in 2004, plus half a yuan – hence “50 cent” – for each glowing post they made.

Since then, paying stooges to praise your work online has become about as routine for local government in China as hiring traffic wardens. A recent study at Harvard University found that the Chinese authorities were placing 448m phony comments on the internet each year. In an analysis of 43,800 pro-regime comments, the researchers concluded that 99.3% of them were made by civil servants from a wide variety of government departments. The postings tended to come in bursts at testing times, such as during protests or party meetings.

Interestingly, few of the comments qualify as trolling, in the strict sense. Rather than attacking unbelievers, they focus on swamping the doubters with a flood of positive messages, or cleverly diverting the conversation. As with any job, some practitioners are laughably bad at it. In January 2014, quartz.com found many stooges simply cutting and pasting a suggested question into an online discussion with a party secretary in Ganzhou. “It seems like taxis are far more orderly than in past years,” they all wanted to tell him.

Two years before, however, Ai Weiwei interviewed an anonymous 26-year-old with very sophisticated methods. The young man, whose own family knew nothing of his work, estimated that 10-20% of the comments he saw were left by the 50 Cent Party. He described creating several identities in one forum, and structuring arguments between them so that the most authoritative voice could ultimately settle matters in the government’s favour. Another tactic was to be deliberately provocative, and thus draw public anger on to himself and away from the authorities. “Sometimes I feel like I have a split personality,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I like it or hate it. It’s just a bit more to do each day. A bit more pocket money each month, that’s all.”

Salutin' Putin: inside a Russian troll house

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According to internal documents released by a group of hackers in 2013, Internet Research Agency employed more than 600 people across Russia, and had an implied annual budget of $10m – half of which was paid out in cash. Employees were expected to post on news articles 50 times a day. Those who wrote blogs had to maintain six Facebook accounts and publish at least three posts daily. On Twitter, they had to have at least 10 accounts, on which they would tweet 50 times. All had targets for the number of followers and the level of engagement they had to reach.

Later, an investigator called Lyudmila Savchuk went undercover at the company and afterwards published her experiences. These included smearing the character of the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in the days following his murder, and promoting the theory that he was killed by his own friends, rather than by friends of Putin. “I felt the bullets between my own shoulders,” Savchuk said. “I was so upset that I almost gave myself away. But I was 007. I fulfilled my task.” When a Finnish reporter called Jessikka Aro wrote about Internet Research in 2014, she herself became the target of a frightening campaign of threats and smears.

As you might expect, many Russian trolls lack a certain polish when posting in English. “I think the whole world is realizing what will be with Ukraine, and only US keep on fuck around because of their great plans are doomed to failure,” one Internet Research employee wrote on a forum. Indeed the Guardian’s own moderators have begun to notice regular clues, especially on articles about Ukraine. “We can look at the suspicious tone of certain users, combined with the date they signed up, the time they post and the subjects they post on,” says one senior moderator. “Zealous pro-separatist comments in broken English claiming to be from western counties are very common.”

Estimated troops Several thousand.

Favourite subjects Putin and Trump being great, the opposition being corrupt, the Nato conspiracy against Russia, the effeminacy of Barack Obama.

Israel

There’s been an Israeli public relations war for about as long as there’s been an Israel. In Hebrew it’s called “hasbara”, literally meaning “explanation”, and it involves trying to improve the world’s opinion of the country and its causes. Accordingly there are around 350 official Israeli online channels, covering the full range of social media. For instance, besides its well-known Twitter accounts in English, Hebrew and Arabic, the Israeli Defence Force even has its own Pinterest page, featuring photo collections with themes such as “Soldiers’ Stories” and “IDF Style”.

In 2013, the Israeli government revealed that it would also recruit “covert units” however. These would be staffed by a mixture of international supporters and domestic students, whose high intelligence, low income and familiarity with social media make them generally well suited to professional trolling. “We need a unified effort to explain why we have a legal right to be here in Israel,” the Knesset member Dov Lipman told the Jerusalem Post. “That is key to defeat the movements pushing to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.” Those who signed up would get quick access to government information, and leaders of student groups would also be awarded scholarships.

Sure enough, during the war in Gaza the following summer, a student group called Israel Under Fire emerged as one of many voices promoting the Israeli side of the story. “We counter Palestinian propaganda and explain the Israeli perspective,” the group’s leader, Yarden Ben-Yosef, said. “Social media is another place where the war goes on. This is another way to tell our story.” We do not know whether Israel Under Fire was itself one of these covert units, or whether Ben-Yosef got a scholarship. The group’s Facebook Page is still active today.

Ukraine

If Russia has a troll army, why shouldn’t Ukraine? With this logic, last February, the country’s new Information Policy Ministry announced the launch of its own i-army, based at i-army.org, with plans to challenge the enemy version of events on social media. “I already said more than once that we should effectively combat Russian bots and fake information,” Ukraine’s information policy minister Yuriy Stets said. “I think this project will give us many volunteers who are ready to disseminate truthful information and expose fake reports from Russia.”

It is not clear how many Ukrainians or Ukraine supporters have yet taken up the cause. The i-army.org site itself, where volunteers can join, is certainly not very appealing to outsiders. It is a crazed and relentless jumble of unflattering stories about Russia – from details about the MH17 air crash, to doping by its athletes, to unsubstantiated allegations from the western media that Putin is a paedophile. “Do not let yourself be deceived – spread the truth!” the site says, rousingly.

More obvious signs of life can be found on the i-army’s Twitter page. This is very active, with 12,800 followers, which isn’t bad, and retweets regularly runs into dozens or hundreds. Clearly some of its followers have been arguing Ukraine’s case online, but the tweets themselves are not very persuasive, offering photographs of captured Russian military hardware, dry political statements and sudden comic memes about Russia’s federal reserves, for example.

The account’s wallpaper perhaps tells you everything you need to know about the Information Policy Ministry – or the “Ministry of Truth”, as some Ukrainian wags prefer. It depicts a group of noble white knights carrying the ministry’s logo into battle against, literally, an army of fantastical trolls (who rather incongruously carry the logos of RT television and Russia 24). No matter how sympathetic one might feel towards the Ukrainian cause, it is hard not to feel that this particular region of the conflict needs a lighter touch.

Estimated troops A few hundred.

Favourite subjects Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

UK

The so-called “Twitter Troops” of the 77th Brigade were somewhat misunderstood by the media when the new army unit was created last year. In fact social media was just one example of many non-military skills that the specialist soldiers were intended to bring to the army. And in any case, the MoD informs me, it would not be a soldier’s job to launch a disinformation campaign on the battlefield, even if they had the time.

You don’t hear much about JTRIG in Britain, however, and they do just this kind of thing. Indeed the very existence of the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group was a national secret until documents from Edward Snowden were published by Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman in 2014. And they reveal a very busy group of people, whose work within GCHQ was intended to help everyone from the police and MI5 to the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Bank of England.

Some of JTRIG’s tactics, such as hacking into websites and setting up sexual “honeypot” stings, sound more or less like conventional spying. Others were carefully designed to manipulate and deceive. In the words of the leaked document, these included “Uploading YouTube videos containing persuasive messages; establishing online aliases with Facebook and Twitter accounts, blogs and forum memberships … sending spoof emails and text messages as well as providing spoof online resources; and setting up spoof trade sites.”

Some of this sounds reasonable, and frankly welcome, such as disrupting the online activities of terrorists or child abusers. Indeed, if it still exists, JTRIG seems to target specific groups or individuals, rather than trying to influence public opinion. Which groups, however, and who chooses them, might be a legitimate concern. The document mentions the English Defence League, for example, whose members were no doubt not happy to be included. For its part, GCHQ will only say that all its work is legal.

Estimated troops A few dozen.

Favourite subjects Sex, drugs, not travelling to Syria please.

North Korea, South Korea

Most North Koreans’ experience of social media is none at all, unless they have been given an illicit glimpse by a foreigner or a government official. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all officially blocked, just in case. Domestically, there is thus no online opinion for the regime to bother about controlling. (Unless they launch their own version of Facebook, as some believe they plan to.) Across the border, however, just about all South Koreans have smartphones, KakaoTalk and the fastest internet in the world. They also have about 200 North Korean trolls to contend with, according to a report published by a South Korean think-tank, the Police Policy Institute, in 2013. In total the report estimated that North Korean agents had posted 41,373 pieces of propaganda in 2012. (That’s about one every two days per agent, which is hardly Stakhanovite.)

Given the extreme strangeness of the regime in Pyongyang, it is easy to presume that they would not know how to talk to a sophisticated southern audience. In fact their approach, as revealed in the report, is rather clever. Instead of hammering people with outlandish and unconvincing Juche propaganda in the usual North Korean way, Pyongyang’s trolls focus on areas that are still debated in the south – such as whether to give southerners access to sites (currently blocked) that praise the northern regime. Aware that recently started accounts with little background often arouse suspicion, northern agents also tend to work behind identities stolen from real southern users.

Clearly the problem has been serious enough for South Korea to react, and indeed to overreact. For years the country’s National Intelligence Service has been routinely posting messages of its own to attack those coming from the north, and at times these have allegedly strayed into attacks on South Korea’s own opposition parties. Last year the country’s former intelligence chief Won Sei-hoon was convicted of trying to influence the outcome of the 2012 presidential election in favour of the incumbent Park Geun-hye. A retrial has since been ordered, but in the original Won was alleged to be running a team of nine agents who used at least 658 Twitter identities to post many thousands of messages to discredit the north – and also, in the case of 274,800 messages, to smear President Park’s opponents, who were described as, among other things, “leftist followers of North Korea”.

Estimated troops 200 (north) 9 (south).

Favourite subject Whether North Korea is a) paradise b) paranoid.

Turkey

President Erdoğan was taught a lesson by the Gezi Park protests of 2013. Not, unfortunately, that Turks should be allowed to live more freely, but that he should take control of social media, with which they had organised themselves against him. By the end of the summer, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had begun recruiting a team of 6,000 social media operatives. “We aim at developing a positive political language which we are teaching to our volunteers,” a party official told the Wall Street Journal at the time. “And when the opposing camp spreads disinformation about the party, we correct them with valid information, always using positive language.” But not always being open about it. When asked to name some of the people who would be correcting this misinformation, the official declined.

At times the “AK Trolls”, as they became known, spread false stories. In July 2014, it was reported that they started a fake Twitter account supposedly from the musician Erkan Ogur, used it to tweet controversial comments about the state intelligence services, then complained about “his” tweets to the AKP authorities in Sakarya, who promptly cancelled Ogur’s forthcoming concert there. Later, Erdoğan’s own daughter Sumeyye was apparently recorded asking one of his advisers for help from “our trolls”. When recordings allegedly showing Erdoğan’s own corruption began to spread on Twitter in the spring of 2014, he simply (but not very effectively) shut Twitter down.

Perhaps aware that this Putinesque farce wasn’t making the AKP more popular, the party changed tack just before the general elections last spring, launching the New Turkey Digital Office, which would henceforth dish out more conventional online propaganda. “All of our accounts will be officially announced,” spokesman Besir Atalay told the Turkish media. “Our messages will be determined at the party headquarters. None of the other accounts would be related to us, including those ones [the trolls].” Nevertheless the AKP lost its majority in the elections. Then regained it in new elections later in the year.

Estimated troops Formerly 6,000, probably still 6,000.

Favourite subjects Standing up to the Kurds, standing up to Russia, standing up to Arabs, standing up to Israel …